Brain-Training Device May Ease Stroke Paralysis

MONDAY, Dec. 2, 2013 (HealthDay News) -- Scientists are testing a new thought-controlled device that may one day help people move limbs again after they've been paralyzed by a stroke.

The device combines a high-tech brain-computer interface with electrical stimulation of the damaged muscles to help patients relearn how to move frozen limbs.

So far, eight patients who had lost movement in one hand have been through six weeks of therapy with the device. They reported improvements in their ability to complete daily tasks.

"Things like combing their hair and buttoning their shirt," explained study author Dr. Vivek Prabhakaran, director of functional neuroimaging in radiology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

"These are patients who are months and years out from their strokes," Prabhakaran said. "Early studies suggested that there was no real room for change for these patients, that they had plateaued in the recovery. We're showing there is still room for change. There is plasticity we can harness."

To use the new tool, patients wear a cap of electrodes that picks up brain signals. Those signals are decoded by a computer. The computer, in turn, sends tiny jolts of electricity through wires to sticky pads placed on the muscles of a patient's paralyzed arm. The jolts act like nerve impulses, telling the muscles to move.

A simple video game on the computer screen prompts patients to try to hit a target by moving a ball with their affected arm. Patients practice with the game for about two hours at a time, every other day.

Researchers also scanned the patients' brains before, during and a month after they finished 15 sessions with the device.

The more patients practiced, the more they were able to train their brains, the researchers found.

The findings were scheduled for presentation Monday at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America, in Chicago.

Strokes occur when blood flow to the brain stops. This happens because a blood clot blocks a blood vessel in the brain or a blood vessel breaks in the brain. Strokes often cause problems with movement and language.